1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of carcass processing, and more particularly, is directed to a water disinfection, recovery and re-use process used in the processing of poultry.
2. Background of the Related Art
The typical poultry processing plant receives live animals from the grow-out farms, slaughters the animals, drains the blood and then removes the feathers, xe2x80x9cpawsxe2x80x9d, heads and detritus in the initial stages of processing. The carcasses are then sent to mechanized evisceration where the internal organs, digestive tract and other edible and inedible parts are removed. In typical operations, some of the internal organs (i.e., heart, liver and gizzards) are harvested for food products. The carcasses are thereafter sent by way of mechanized line operations through a series of washing and sanitizing steps before the product is shipped as xe2x80x9cfreshxe2x80x9d product or packaged for freezing. These line operations typically consume large quantities of water.
Accordingly, the poultry processing industry has generally been characterized as a large volume consumer of water in conducting the slaughter, processing and packing of animals for both human consumption and other uses. Recent initiatives by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), under the jurisdiction of the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), have resulted in a further increase in the volume of water used to wash poultry carcasses to meet the more stringent requirements of xe2x80x9c0 pathogen tolerancexe2x80x9d.
In addition, poultry industry interests have been actively seeking methods of reducing the consumption of water due to economic reasons and, additionally in some cases, because of limited availability of sufficient volumes of water to meet the processing requirements. Still other considerations involving limited water treatment resources have raised the need to reduce water consumption. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide new solutions to reducing the volume of water required for processing poultry or other foodstuffs.
Prior processes have not focused on the need to conserve water from an economic perspective and accordingly, while they may generally involve water reuse applications, their approaches have failed to address critical economic restrictions inherent in poultry and other food processing operations. It is yet another object of the present invention to provide water reuse processes which are economically feasible and which provide improved savings to the food-preparing manufacturer.
Typical of prior approaches have been efforts directed to the recovery, treatment and recycle of poultry chiller bath water in a closed loop and xe2x80x9csemi-closed loopxe2x80x9d type of process where water from the chiller baths is treated to remove solids, fats, oil, grease, organic compounds and microorganisms before reintroducing the treated water to the chiller baths. These efforts may be characterized as primarily aimed at reducing the electrical power considerations in chilling the water used in these systems of processing operations. These goals are generally met by reusing the already cooled chiller water and trying to reintroduce the already chilled water back into the chiller makeup feed water, thereby reducing the temperature of incoming fresh water. However, the recovery of used chiller bath process water brings with it a very high contamination burden requiring extensive treatment. Representative examples of such approaches have been described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,728,305; 5,173,190; 5,178,755; 5,053,140; 4,790,943; and 5,593,598. While such approaches have had some limited success in addressing the treatment challenges, they have to date proven to be of questionable economic value to the industry. It is still another object of the present invention to address such deficiencies with new approaches and devices, which are economically sensitive.
Prior efforts have also generated a substantial number of devices designed to provide some filtering efforts. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,759,415; 5,248,439; 5,132,010; 4,876,004; 4,844,189; 4,481,080 and 3,912,533 provide representative examples of such devices. As will be readily noted, some are structurally complex requiring substantial capital expenses and others, while simpler in structure, are aimed at solving different needs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,080 shows a series of printouts separated by baffles for equalizing the residence times of large and small particles. It has been discovered that such solutions are either unnecessarily complex or are unnecessary altogether. It is another aspect of the present invention to provide devices useful in water recovery and treatment methods, which avoid such deficiencies and solve the needs of removing gross levels of contaminants quickly, effectively and economically.
In several of the inventions referenced the inventors have directed their efforts at chilled water reuse claiming significant savings in Btu requirements. The devices employed have focused upon the recovery, treatment and reuse of the USDA required 0.5 gallon per bird overflow. While the technical approaches may differ from invention to invention, they share the disadvantages that the source of their water (i.e., bird chiller water) contains a significant and high quantity of organic contaminants as compared to the sources that are identified by the pa inventors herein, and the volumes available for recovery are limited strictly to the USDA mandated 0.5 gallon per bird limitation. It is yet another object of the present invention to avoid the disadvantages associated with such prior art approaches.
The various objects and aspects of the present invention are met using an approach which focuses on the source of the process water to be recovered and reused. This is in contrast to prior approaches which have focused upon the recovery and reuse of the xe2x80x9ccommunal bathxe2x80x9d chiller water. These conventional approaches commonly suffer from difficult treatment challenges and typically require fairly sophisticated treatment equipment components. As a result, these approaches have been accompanied by disadvantageously high capital and operating costs.
The inventive approach of the present invention comprises processes which allow for the safe and economic recovery, treatment and reuse of certain poultry processing water, specifically including the xe2x80x9ccarcass final rinsexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cinside/ outside carcass rinsexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cwater railsxe2x80x9d or, water sprays used in the inspection process for the inspectors to wash their hands and instruments, flume transport of various animal parts and other smaller streams with respect to poultry processing operations while avoiding exclusive use of communal chiller bath water. In certain circumstances chiller bath overflow water may be used as one of the water sources if such chiller water can be sufficiently diluted with water from other sources. The intended points of re-use for this recovered and treated water have been identified as chiller bath water, evisceration wash water, defeathering water and other xe2x80x9cnon-product contactxe2x80x9d processes. Additionally, in those plants where transport of process water is complicated due to plant layout and physical design an improved device is provided for effecting an economic and efficient recovery system comprising a recovery sump with a continuing overflow to permit removal of soiled water, grease and oils.